Independent Monitoring of Court Proceedings in Russia

According to a post published yesterday at www.hro.org, on 13 September 2011 the Center of International Protection, a Russian non-governmental organisation, came forward with an initiative to conduct independent monitoring of court proceedings in Russia. Karinna Moskalenko, the head of the Center, points out that:

Everybody is constantly complaining about Russian courts and violation of the right to a fair trial.[1] In this regard, we are talking about monitoring as a possible form and method of revealing systemic problems of Russian justice. It is useful for the judges to look at themselves from the outside. And not only for judges, but also for attorneys. With the help of this monitoring trial participants will be able to see themselves as in a mirror. And this is indeed interesting. [Translation from Russian into English is made by me. See this quote in Russian at]

To conduct the monitoring of court trials observers will visit various Russian courts during one week and report the results of their observations. After having been processed, the results of the monitoring will be published by the Center.

The Center has stated that it is going to start the monitoring this December. Meanwhile, it still needs time to elaborate its final plan with regard to the monitoring procedure, as well as to recruit and train observers and other participants of the project. 

As Karinna Moskalenko noted, the role of observes should be given to legal professionals to ensure that all crucially important violations are taken into account. However, such legal professionals should be other than trial attorneys (advokaty), since the latter cannot be objective enough especially with respect to the courts where they took part in trials.

Moskalenko plans to conduct the monitoring throughout Russia. At the same time the Center might have difficulties in finding enough analysts to process a large volume of results.

Taking into account the Center’s many years’ experience in conducting similar projects together with the International Commission of Jurists, its monitoring initiative may contribute greatly to the furtherance of the rule of law in Russia.

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[1] I presume Ms. Moskalenko meant complaints to the ECHR alleging violation of Article 6 of the Convention.